Colorado State is about to step into a conference it once helped reshape from the outside.
When the Pac-12 officially relaunches on July 1, the Rams will be part of it - a full-circle move that echoes the same kind of quiet alliance-building that led to the creation of the Mountain West in the first place. This time, CSU is leaving the league it helped form and joining forces with a new Pac-12 built around Oregon State and Washington State, the two schools that stayed behind after the conference was gutted.
The Rams were part of the first wave to announce the switch on Sept. 11, 2024, along with Boise State, Fresno State and San Diego State. Utah State followed soon after, while Texas State was added from the Sun Belt and Gonzaga from the West Coast Conference.
At the time, CSU president Amy Parsons called it “Being able to join the Pac-12 now and being around the table to build an amazing conference with a league that has the storied 100-year history is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,”
That move, like the one that created the Mountain West, came together quietly. And like that earlier breakaway, it left behind a trail of anger, legal fights and hard feelings.
The exit-fee battle is still not fully settled, though the leagues reached tentative agreement on a settlement in May of 2026.
For Colorado State, the story actually starts long before the Pac-12 reboot. It goes back to the spring of 1998, when presidents from schools in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, along with the superintendent of the U.S.
Air Force Academy, met in a secluded room at the then 3-year-old Denver International Airport. CSU President Albert Yates, BYU President Merrill Bateman, Utah President Bernie Machen, Wyoming President Phillip Dubois and Air Force Academy Superintendent Tad Oelstrom were there to map out a break from the Western Athletic Conference and build something new.
Their concern was simple: the WAC had grown too big, spreading across four time zones and threatening to split traditional rivalries apart under a new scheduling setup. Yates pushed for the secret meeting after worrying that CSU and Wyoming could end up separated on a permanent basis.
The group knew they needed at least three more schools to make the idea work. New Mexico was an obvious target, since it was a charter member of the WAC when that league formed in 1962.
They still needed two more, and after plenty of discussion, they settled on San Diego State and UNLV. All three said yes right away.
The breakaway became public when the presidents informed the other eight WAC schools at conference meetings in May 1998, with competition set to begin the following fall. The reaction from the schools left behind was furious.
The Mountain West hired its first commissioner, Craig Thompson, on Oct. 15, 1998.
Thompson had been the commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference. The league then formally opened on Jan. 4, 1999, with headquarters in Colorado Springs.
Now CSU is heading in the opposite direction, into a Pac-12 that first formed in 1915 and spent much of its history as the West’s premier college sports conference.
John Weber, Colorado State’s athletic director, framed the move simply: “It’s a special moment for the University,”
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